


Foresight

by softintelligence



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Family, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3126140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softintelligence/pseuds/softintelligence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke Castellan wants to see his mother again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foresight

Luke opened his eyes.

At least, they felt like his eyes. As he gazed into the green and white shroud wrapped above him, he realized they were probably not his eyes, but the approximation of eyelids and eyes, his mind's guess at what his body felt like.

The pressure of Kronos no longer plagued his every living moment. Kronos was no longer whispering in his ear promises of power or revenge. The ever-present hatred and resentment around his heart that had driven him to run away from his home, from Camp Half-Blood--it was all gone. 

It seemed so simple: He was dead, and death had freed him. 

From the motion of his body, he must be on his way to the Underworld. 

His body felt weak, but he was thinking, rebirth. He would try for that. Cast off the wrongdoings of this life, forget everyone--Ethan, Annabeth, Thalia, Chiron, Percy, Kronos, his mom--

His mom.

"Wait," he said, and his throat burned with the effort to speak. "Wait, I . . ." He knew what it would sound like to ask for a favor now, after all the chaos he had caused.

Whoever was moving him stopped. 

"I want to see my mom." His voice cracked. "One more time. Just let me set things right. I want to go home." 

He heard shuffling, felt himself go back into motion. His lip trembled. 

It had been a long shot, anyway. 

\---

Luke opened his eyes. 

It was night-time. He was standing in front of his house, complete with wind chimes and brass ribbons. At his feet, on the sidewalk, were sad, torn up beanbags. He picked up the Minotaur bean-bag and weighed it in his hands. 

His hands. 

Luke replaced the Minotaur and stared at his hands. There were fissure lines all over his skin, red in some places, black in others, like a clay model that someone had taken a hammer to him and begun to crack his outer shell. His face probably looked no better.

At least he was no longer wearing the armor. He was wearing dark funereal robes. 

He wondered if he could leave. He was dead, wasn't he? He turned around, but he couldn't see two feet in front of him, as though his house were a sole light in a pit of darkness. He reached out with his hand, and his hand met a wall of solid darkness. 

He turned back to his house, walked up to the front door, and knocked. His knuckles rapped twice, and the door swung open, his mother on the other side, her white hair sticking out everywhere, her hands covered in ash and burnt crumbs.

"Luke!" she said, smiling widely. She reached out with her thin arms and pulled him close, until his chin was banging against her shoulder. "You came back! See, of course, I knew you would, I knew you would . . ." 

She dragged him into the house before he could greet her. The living room looked like it had been taken care of, but the kitchen . . . 

"Mom," Luke said, staring at the tupperware boxes of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. 

"I've been making your lunches everyday," his mother said. "You're a growing boy! You should be eating healthy."

He'd seen the Tupperware boxes last time he had seen her, last spring, when he'd come for her blessing, but it had seemed different then. The boxes had seemed unimportant, small. He hadn't remembered there being so many. What he remembered was touching her shoulders with his hands, squeezing until the corners of her eyes crinkled in pain, him almost shouting, "I need your blessing! Give it to me!" 

The memory made his head ache. He would take it back if he could, or fill a jar with excuses meant to soothe her: it had been a difficult time, he had thought it was the best possible solution, he had been alone and stupid and foolhardy . . . There were so many he knew he could give. He knew his mom would accept them all, even if she had no idea what he was talking about.

He focused on the Tupperware boxes.

"Mom, some of these are molding." He began to take the boxes from the top and empty them into the trash can. 

"Oh dear," his mother said. "If you do that, what will you eat?" She seemed to float over to the kitchen counter. "I'll make you another, right now. And I'll make you some Kool-Aid as well. That's your favorite. It's always been your favorite." 

Luke filled two trash bags' worth of sandwiches of varying degrees of mold. His mom started to hum under her breath as he walked from cupboard to cupboard, pulling out bread and peanut butter and jelly. 

He took the bags outside, dropped them in the trash cans where they could be picked up later, and returned to the house. His mother had set a plate for both of them, each with its own sandwich, and a cup of Kool-Aid on the side.

"Eat," she said. "You look so skinny, Luke."

He realized she didn't the scars or his clothes. Luke wondered what she _did_ see of him. Did she see him as she did a year ago, when he had come to her, heavy bags under his eyes? Did she seem as though he had never left--still a child?

Luke picked up the PBJ sandwich in both hands and took a bite. The bread was just the right amount of toasted, just slightly crunchy on the outside but still soft on the inside, the peanut butter crunchy, the jam just the right kind of sweet with strawberry pieces inside of it. 

He chewed slowly and swallowed with some difficulty, blinking rapidly at the sandwich. The bread cracked in the force of his grip. 

The food at Camp Half Blood had been good. The food he'd eaten while traveling the country had been all right--just the bare necessities. But this sandwich. 

It was just a sandwich, and yet. 

"How is it, Luke?"

"Still my favorite," he said, and rubbed the tears off his scarred face with the back of his charred hands.

He took a quick drink of the Kool-Aid. It was cold in his mouth, in his throat, in his stomach. He held a hand over his eyes and swallowed, holding the sandwich still in his other hand. 

His mother was suddenly very close to him, her hand on his back. "What's wrong?" 

Luke swallowed with some difficulty. "Nothing." It wasn't a lie. Nothing was wrong anymore. Kronos had been defeated, and while he had caused people to die--well, people could move forward from here. 

He finished eating, and his mom asked him if he wanted more, but he shook his head. "It's fine. Let me help you clean the kitchen." He stood with his plate and his cup. 

"Oh, you don't have to, Luke," she said. "This much, I can do. You should focus on taking care of yourself."

"I have been," Luke said. "Let me help you this time, Mom." He had cleaned the pitchers for the Kool-Aid and put them away and had started working on the particularly moldy Tupperware boxes. It was going to be a pain. He was elbow deep in soap suds. 

He didn't know how long he had here.

His mother stood next to him, smiling at him. She put her hand on his arm, his shoulder, and while he was scrubbing away at a lid she stopped him by turning his face toward him. 

"I'm glad you came back to visit me," she said. Her voice was soft. "I knew you would come back."

Luke stared into her eyes. They were clear, not clouded like they had been. 

"Mom?" Luke asked.

"You look like you've been through so much," she said, and touched the scar on his face. "Your terrible fate . . ." She smiled sadly. "Your fate has already come true, hasn't it?"

Luke turned back to the soap suds. He was barely halfway through all of the Tupperware containers. "Dad will still visit you. I won't come back after today." He didn't know what had given her the power to see him as he truly was, but he wouldn't question it. 

His mom walked away from him. After a moment, behind him, he could hear the feet of the chair sliding against the floor. 

Luke finished cleaning all the Tupperware containers and dried his hands against his clothes. He was sure that it was some kind of sacrilege, but he didn't care: wiping his hands on his funereal robes was a small offense in comparison to all he had done before. 

He turned around and sat down next to his mom. Her eyes closed and her head bowed, she was squeezing her thin hands together.

"I couldn't protect you," she whispered. "You weren't safe." 

"It wasn't you, mom," Luke said. He lifted his arm to put it around her, but he hovered over her shoulder, unsure. Finally, he removed his arm. "It was me. I was scared of you. I didn't understand."

"I should have tried--" 

"Mom," Luke said, and this time he put his arm on her shoulders. "Mom, I was young and stupid, and . . . I spent too much time being angry, and not enough time with you.

"I'm sorry, Mom."

His mom's shoulders shook. He pulled her closer, until she was pressed against his shoulder. "I knew you would come back, but . . ." Her voice broke. "Luke . . . I'm sorry . . . I failed you."

Luke pressed his lips against her head. He pulled away and wiped her face with his thumb. "You didn't fail me. I think . . . I'm the one who failed you, Mom." 

He took her hands in his own. Her skin was even paler against his burned skin. She turned her hands in his and squeezed back. 

A chill went down his spine. He looked outside the window. The solid wall of darkness had closed in; he could no longer see the sidewalk. All that was left was a few feet of the front yard. His time was running out.

He turned back to his mom. "At the end, I made the right decision. I think I could go to Elysium, if I wanted to."

"That's good," his mom said, tears running down her face. He wiped them away as fast as they came. "I'm proud."

Luke smiled; the motion hurt a little. "I'm going to try again. Be reborn. Do it right the whole time, instead of only at the end. I'm going to try for Isle of the Blest."

His mom turned toward him. "Your fate, I--" Her eyes were changing. Getting cloudy again. "You have to go again, don't you?" The pitch of her voice lifted. "Luke, don't go--"

"I love you," Luke said. He could feel the wall of darkness against his back. "I'm sorry." 

"Be safe," she said. 

As though a tiny thousand hands were grabbing his clothes, his hair, his skin, Luke felt the darkness began to pull him inside, his vision darkening at the edges.

"Promise me," his mom said, eyes cloudy again. "Promise me you'll be safe." 

As the darkness swallowed him up, the vision of his mom disappearing before him, he said, "I promise, Mom," and hoped that it wasn't a lie. 

\---

In the River Lethe, the last memory that left him was the taste of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the way his mother's wrinkled hands felt against hers, the look in her eyes.

_"Be safe, Luke. Promise me you'll be safe."_

Luke closed his eyes and forgot.


End file.
